Followers

Monday, September 20, 2010

God has truly blessed our family over the years. We stand in awe of his blessings that we do not deserve. My husband is a senior pastor in Ohio, but we are originally from MS and AL. We just celebrated 15 years of marriage this summer. We were not sure if we would be able to have children, but through God's goodness He blessed us with 2 beautiful daughters. Adoption was talked about, but nothing ever serious. We have several friends who have adopted both domestically and internationally. I would feel little nudges that maybe we should think about it, but I would push those thoughts back. I was happy with our family of four.

Over the past year or so, the nudging from the Lord became louder. The movie "The Blind Side" came out, and when we left the movie I made a little joke about adopting, and my husband said yes. Again, I pushed it aside. My husband has always been ready I believe. Our church has helped orphans in Kenya, and has had a friend of ours come in and talk about adoption. This past summer we were at the Southern Baptist Convention and there was a big push for ministers to step up and help out the millions of orphans around the world or to help families who are adopting. During one of the speakers, God spoke to me and told me it was time. No more putting it off. When he spoke of how the girls that are not adopted could potentially spend a life that I would not want my daughters in, I just knew that is what our family should do. The funny thing was that I was going to bring it up at dinner, and my husband was the first to do so, and I just said YES! I am ready.

Several have said, why another girl - it is what God has laid on our hearts - a special needs girls from China. We want to show this girl the love of a family as well as the love of a Father that has known about this before we did. We didn't know originally where when we started, but God has lead us to China and the agency we chose.

Read more about our story here: http://increasingheartandhome.blogspot.com